


Insidious Little Things

by SeptemberStar



Category: Beetlejuice (1988)
Genre: Beetlejuice/Lydia - Freeform, Broken Rules, Creeper BJ, Emotionally Unstable Lydia, F/M, Implied Vengeance, Post-Film
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 13:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7223308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeptemberStar/pseuds/SeptemberStar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was crafty; treacherous and evil. He was fucking nuts. He was bad for her. He scared her half-to-death - literally.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, those were all insidious little things she was still attracted to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Insidious Little Things

Insidious Little Things  
-

“The devil doesn’t come dressed in a red cape and pointy horns. He comes as everything you’ve ever wished for.”

-

Lydia had to try really hard not to think about...him. She didn’t, a lot of the time - she was too busy trying to get through school, trying to keep the friends she’d made, and ignore the enemies. She made herself think about other stuff, anything, absurd, ridiculous things, things to distract her from remembering the excitement of being the subject of the icy glint of his eyes, the addictive energy that had flamed from his skin to hers whenever he’d touched her.

He was crafty; treacherous and evil. He was fucking nuts. He was bad for her. He scared her half-to-death - literally.

Unfortunately, those were all insidious little things she was still attracted to.

She hadn’t just gone cold turkey after the ghosts banishment - she was still a goth girl, through and through. She still ate, lived, breathed all things dark and unusual. Despite Adam and Barbara, despite a new peaceful existence with her parents, she still felt alone. She felt like she had to act more normal for them, and it was exhausting her the fuck out. Her mind would wander at her weak times, when she dared to recall her terrifying adventure, and she’d revel in the remembered emotions, the fear, the excitement.

She had graduated high school, it was all official now. Her childhood was at it's end. Soon she’d be expected to graduate college, get a job, and start living an even more normal, boring, productive life. One with no ghosts, no adventures, no hope - 

“It doesn’t have to end up like that, y’know.”

Lydia smirked, almost imaging she could hear that nerve-grating, smoke-rough voice.

I better not be hearing voices again, she suddenly thought gloomily. She could barely stand the side-effects of the ones she was already on...

“Yeah, if only,” Lydia sighed, rinsing the soap from her eyes. “Well, wherever you are, it’s gotta’ be better than here.” 

“No way in hell that’s true, babes - for example - this is totally goin’ in my spank-bank!”“

Something cold and rough tweaked her nipple.

Lydia’s eyes flew open.

“I gotta’ admit, though, seein’ you like this is puttin’ me in a world a hurt. Seriously, you gave me a such an instant hard-on I think I’d a died - if I wasn’t past worm-bait already.”

Beetlejuice stood there, less than an inch away, with an evil twinkle in his acid-green eyes, and a disgustingly content smirk on his dead face. He lifted sharp, blood-stained fingertips and waggled them at her with every ounce of his gross charm.

“Heya. Remember me, babes?”

“Aaaaaaaa-ahhhh! Beetlejuice!” Lydia jumped back, staggered out of the tub, and took the unfortunate curtain, rod and all, with her. 

“Aaa-ahhh, Lydia Deetz!” the poltergeist mocked her with a little dance, throwing his hands up in mock-horror.

Lydia fell back against the wall and stared, wild-eyed and panting at the creature grinning at her from the tub, the steamy shower water seemingly passing through his filthy, bone-dry body.

“Wha - how - huh?”

“You wanna’ add ‘where’ and ‘why’ to that while you’re at it, oh-great-backstabber?” Beetlejuice asked snarkily, but his wide, sunken eyes were glued to her exposed, pink-flushed chest.

“Eh, did I catcha’ at a bad time? Weren’t in the middle of ticklin’ the beaver, were ya’?”

Lydia embarrassed herself by shrieking again, this time mostly in disgust, and wrapped the cold vinyl curtain around her body, nearly clocking herself in the head with the curtain rod in the process. The water from her and the curtain flowed down her ankles to the floor, and she squeaked as she slipped, lost her balance, and fell right back into the tub - into his hands.

Beetlejuice genuinely grabbed her shoulders to stop her fall, but his hands slid over her wet skin and he suddenly had two handfuls of warm, soft Lydia.

“Whoa, babes,” he snorted with suggestive laughter as he gave her generous C cups a teasing grope, “kinda’ gives new meaning to ‘slippery when wet’, know what I mean?” A convenient, loud honking sound-effect punctuated his squeezes. “Huh, did you fill out! M’gettin’ some serious beaver-fever myself, here, come to think of it - “

“Ergh, get off me, you striped pig!” Lydia snapped, lurching back out of the tub. She made sure she stayed on the bath rug this time, and glared at the beast through the black hair matted across her face. She shook it back and snarled through her shock, “What the hell are you doing back here?! I thought you were dea - I mean, gone! As in, ‘forever’!”

The poltergeist just lifted an eyebrow as he shoved his hands in his striped pockets, lips curling in an infuriating smirk.

“Oh - oh, my god...did I call you?” Lydia gulped. She was horrified at the thought. Was it possible? She’d always been so careful - when would she have said it? She hadn’t! But, then there were those few weeks back in her junior year when she’d been hallucinating from the meds. (Lithium?) She’d had a bad reaction, and couldn’t remember what had happened for three days after...but no, he wouldn’t have waited that long to confront her, he was a creature of pure impulse - 

“BeetlejuiceBeetlejuiceBeetlejuice!”

Beetlejuice merely yawned, apparently bored at her desperately rattled-off words and polished his fingernails on his smudged coat-sleeve. 

“You’re not gonna’ bother with that old chestnut again, are ya’?”

Lydia immediately felt faint. She backed off, shaking her head in denial as cooling pearls of water ran down her frozen spine. 

“Oh, god. Oh, no...no,no,no,no,no…” She hit the edge of the closed toilet and fell onto it with a thump. “You’re still here.”

Beetlejuice didn’t laugh. He didn’t smile, either. He pulled his hands out of his pockets, took his time lighting a crumpled, filterless cigarette, and then stepped very slowly, very deliberately toward her. He took a long, hard drag off it, and then bent over to look her right in the face.

Lydia couldn’t move. The room temperature suddenly dropped unbearably. He was so close she could see the mold spores on his iridescent white skin, and what had to be a minute, nearly see-through beetle wind it's way from one side of his grubby hairline to another. The lighting in this bathroom was harsh and unforgiving, and it showed her every detail of the ghost that she might have missed back when he appeared to her years ago in the dark and gloom.

Frozen. 

She was mesmerized by her terror, and staring wide-eyed at the unholy power that glowed in every particle of his purple-flecked, green irises when he suddenly blew out a great cloud of smoke into her face, and she broke, coughing as it invaded her lungs.

“H-how can you still be here?!” she asked half-hysterically when she managed to catch her breath, teeth chattering.

“Statute of Limitations, Lyds,” Beetlejuice said, his voice as level and normal as she’d ever heard it. “See, I was on Saturn for a long, long time after I dealt with that sandworm that ate me. Time can get...erratic, there. When I finally found a door back into the Neitherworld, I got sent straight back to Ma Hell’s waiting room.” He paused, his face still on her level, still way too close, and his voice got very, very soft...and very, very bitter. She felt his cold breath on her cheeks, and shuddered.

“Yeah. As my intended, bet you were just eaten up with guilt all that time, too...wern’cha’?” His teeth snapped at her.

Lydia drew back, blinking. She felt like crawling under a rock. She’d never thought of her betrayal of him as, well, a real betrayal. It had been simple - he was the bad guy, they were the good guys, and he’d been defeated. They - she - had been in the right.

Hadn’t they?

“Anyways I waited there for a long time, too. By the time I saw any of the really high-up muckety-mucks, a few boring years had gone by here in Mundaneville, U.S.A. So much time had passed, and that ol’ senile, punctured windbag Juno was careless enough not to have bothered checkin’ back with you. No charges, no case, so they had ta’...let me go.”

Lydia whimpered. With him this close, reeking of fresh graveyard dirt, damp, rotting vegetation, and tobacco smoke, she couldn’t control it. Every sense screamed at her that he was really there.

He shook his head, his eyes taking on an impossibly, vaguely hurt expression. “Thought I was finally a goner with that sandworm stunt didn’t they? It’s been over six-hundred years, two centuries of which working for those very stiffs, and they still make the hugest-fucking mistake of underestimatin’ me. All those dust-veined bureaucrats almost pissed themselves when I actually came back. Suckeerrrs. Heh. It was almost worth it. Ah, well, ‘he who intends to win the war’, and all that.”

Finally, Beetlejuice blinked, refocusing on her, and his jaundiced eyes crinkled a bit around the edges, like he might smile, but he still didn’t. 

“Remind me ta’ show ya’ my scars sometime, babes.”

Lydia felt a sickening rush of unaccustomed guilt.

“Unfortunately for you,” he continued to murmur from bloodless, moss-flecked lips, and still in that unsettlingly quiet voice, “since you’re still among the living, you’re bound by our previous verbal agreement. I saved your pet-ghosts, Lydia, so now... it’s your turn. Your preference - irrelevant. Mortal rules do not apply. Ol’ Bab’s can’t save ya’ this time.” He snapped the fingers holding his cigarette, intently staring her down.

“You. Owe. Me.”

Lydia felt a searing, sharp pain on her left hand, and yelped, but weakly. She still couldn’t move, but her eyes did. She saw a dull glint of ancient gold on her shaking ring finger, and saw several drops of her blood run down from it. It was his ring, the one from that botched horror-show of a wedding...and now it was practically embedded in the tender flesh. It clearly wasn’t going anywhere - and neither was she.

Lydia held her breath until her chest ached and finally let it out with a slightly hysterical wheeze when full realization hit.

“Oh, shit.”

“Yep.” He drew back to a standing position at last, sighed, and looked down at her with startling raptness and a positively ecstatic satisfaction. 

“You, babes,” he punctuated with a calm adjustment of his cuffs, and a purposeful flick of his dingy collar, ”...are royally fucked.”

-

END

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This is a one-shot, just intended to be a practice run getting back into writing after a few years. I always loved Beetlejuice as a kid, and kind of wanted to explore what might happen down the line a little. I like the evil, bloody, grubby version of BJ, kind of like BTVS’s Spike back in the day, where a lot of awesome folks actually wrote fic about Spike being realistically corpse-like, such as smelling of grave-dirt and death. Thanks for reading, and wish me luck on future endeavors! :)


End file.
